"That's Just Corruption": Sen. Chris Murphy on the Prediction Market Crackdown and Profiteering in Youth Sports

0:00Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. If the NBA and the NFL get in bed with these prediction markets, they are knowingly corrupting the sport right after this ad. Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right? And the best part? They accept discover. Accept discover? In a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh, yeah, huh. Discover's accepted where I'd like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times. Right, so we shouldn't get the parachute pants? These are making a comeback. I think. Discover's accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nilson report, with endless scroll algorithms and AI flooding feeds podcasting stands out. They're sought, not served. Audiences actively choose to hear trusted voices on topics they care about.

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2:03Chris Murphy, how obnoxious of a Yukon homer are you in your own estimation? I mean, I'm pretty obnoxious. I mean, Dan Hurley is kind of like a god-like figure. I think everybody understands that. You went to law school there, yes? Yeah, I didn't go undergrad, but I went to law school. But I grew up in Connecticut. And my parents grew up there. So yeah, I was a junior in high school when Tate George hit that shot to beat Clemson to send Yukon into the, it'll be eight game. And like, since then, it's just been a dream. You know, we don't have a lot in Connecticut since the trailers left. So Yukon is what we got. You have Sue Bird winning games onto eternity. You get Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton. You get Karam Butler in that whole era, right? Like late 90s, early 2000s. You've been spoiled as we enter the sweet 16, right? So just to do the accounting here for your partisanship on Friday tomorrow. In the sweet 16, the one seed Yukon women perennial powerhouse,

3:06play number four North Carolina at 5 p.m. Eastern. And then on the men's side, the top seeded Yukon Huskies play number three Michigan state at 945 p.m. Eastern. Give us a picture of Chris Murphy when he's, you know, rooting for the Huskies. I generally like do it on my own. I'm not a great company for these games because I tend to get a little bit to wound up. I have like a weird ritual now where I get so, I get like just just so anxious that I sort of have to watch the games on a little bit of tape delay so that I can like fast forward through some of the tougher moments and then rewind and watch it again. So yeah, I'm generally watching on my own. Maybe with my 14 year old, there's a big Yukon fan and I use the tape to lay as a way to kind of address my anxieties. As a way to self-regulate, which is a theme of this entire conversation, I dare say, how does one regulate when you know what the excesses

4:08of such contests might be? I just want to get the numbers by the way here in front of you because this whole tournament, it's a high watermark economically and perhaps the opposite what it comes to, what you have described as something afflicting the soul of sports, which clearly you have perhaps unhealthy amount of love for. But the amount being gambled legally here in America, and this is not just sports betting, but also now prediction markets, which we will of course get into. You've been instrumental in attempting to regulate those. We're talking about about four and a half billion dollars. And so what comes to mind when I mention, you know, an amount that's apparently on par with the GDP of CERNOM? Yeah, I mean, listen, first of all, I just think there's a lot of lives being ruined. Addiction gambling is a huge problem, especially amongst young boys today and young men. And I just think we have to recognize that. I think it's connected to a larger crisis that's happening amongst men and young men who are losing a little bit of their sense of identity and purpose in the world.

5:09They're trying to find new outlets for energy, trying to find new outlets for risk-taking, and that often comes through sports betting. I think for the non-better though, it's fundamentally changed the product in many ways. So like my favorite show historically to watch, especially at the end of a long day, it's been Sports Center. Sports Center is just a betting show now, right? I mean, almost half the content on that show is about odds and about how to bet on the games tomorrow. And so I've stopped watching it in part because, you know, it just doesn't seem for me any longer. And then as the numbers get bigger, I just do think the opportunities for corruption are harder to avoid and more of these games are going to be rigged. So I don't know, for me, it's changed the experience for the worse. And I think we don't really understand yet, you know, how many, you know, lives ultimately get harmed when the bets are that big. Well, Sports gambling came in and everything, of course, got turned over in various ways, many of which you just mentioned.

6:10And then the prediction market has a concept emerges. And so we're kind of dealing with these multiple fronts, but prediction markets is the one that this week as we're talking. It's been kind of like prediction market where you can Washington. And I want to get to the bill you recently introduced, titled The Bets Off Act, which attempts to make really material changes to the way prediction markets like Polymarket, like Calishe can operate. But just a big picture here, Senator, why do prediction markets as a concept concern you especially? You know, there are lots of prediction markets on events where you don't know the outcome. And sports is right on that list. But the bets these days, the prediction markets that exist these days are on events where the outcome is no-oable. For instance, you can place a bet on what a particular celebrity is going to say on a, you know, evening talk show, a late night talk show. Well, those talk shows are taped at 5 p.m. And so there's hundreds of people, including all the guests who know what that celebrity said.

7:11There's bets on whether the United States is going to go to war on a Friday or a Saturday, whether people inside the White House who know the answer to that question. So there are just a ton of bets on these prediction markets that are rigged by inside information and the markets make it seem as if these are on the level bets when they really aren't. So to me, that's just corruption. And we shouldn't allow for there to be fundamentally rigged prediction markets or betting markets available to ordinary consumers. That seems to be the primary problem. But I also do just worry, you know, like I worry about sports that everything just becomes commoditized, that we kind of just can't enjoy something for the sake of it, that we can't look at an issue like war as a moral issue. Now it's just something that we can make money off of. And I think that that cheapens life a little bit when nothing has inherent value any longer, where value is just connected to your ability to monetize it.

8:13That's not what like sports was for me growing up and as a fan. It was about a real attachment to the team, a belief that when that team did well, I was doing well, but not in a monetary sense. In more of like a spiritual sense, there's a purity of sports that I think gets lost when everything just becomes a bet. A big question that I contemplate a lot as I watch sports as I watch the news is, who is this good for? If it's a rigged casino economy, who's getting rich? And you've now invoked the name of our Lord and Savior in a couple of different ways. And it just reminds me that on polymarket, there was literally, there is literally a market on Will Jesus Christ return before 2027. And the real rub here is not merely that market. It's the spin-off market. Which you can also bet on, which is, will the odds on Will Jesus Christ return before 2027, exceed 5%, which I think just speaks to the whole notion of we're now dealing with, of course, derivatives of the thing that already was kind of apocalyptic.

9:16And of course, you can manipulate all of this stuff by putting more money in, which is to say that, yeah, when money is now the mechanism through which predictions and listen to these companies, truth are being adjudicated. Yeah, it's sports, it's war, it's politics, it's all kind of being treated the same way in a tragically unregulated era, Senator. Yeah, and when I say spiritually, I don't necessarily mean that word in the religious sense. I just mean that there's a purity and a goodness when we view sports purely through a fandom lens. And I think that there's something important when we look at a question of war and peace purely through a moral lens. I do think it just becomes corrupted when all of that gets monetized to cheapens the experience or the debate for us. And I think we do, like, I don't know, this sounds like a little bit too apocalyptic, but I think we die a little bit inside when everything just becomes about dollars and sense. So yes, I think it's time for us to regulate these markets.

10:18I think that there's some markets we just shouldn't offer, like whether there's going to be a famine in the Middle East or not or what somebody's going to say on a talk show. And on the sports side, I just think that states should be able to put basic regulations around these markets. And they can't do that for the prediction markets. They can do that for, you know, draft kings and other sort of mainstream betting sites, but they can't do that for Kalshin and Polly Market. And I think that we should have basic basic regulatory structures around betting markets. Allow people to do it, but make sure that there are some protections. For people who aren't familiar with where the bar is right now on regulation, it does to continue the language of like, who's going to save us? It's worth noting, right? So the CFTC, which is now the regulatory agency that has taken jurisdiction under this administration of quote unquote event contracts, aka the bets that prediction markets put out, they, according to barons, you know, have effectively closed their Chicago enforcement office which was famed for its regulation.

11:20That's where the enforcement attorneys were. They're apparently according to barons are now zero of those attorneys left that SEC for those who are not keeping up with the news literally just from this week. You have one of the top people there stepping down because apparently there is perhaps unsurprising and retrospect conflict between how much enforcement the SEC will do as regards the president and his family. Can you describe for a layman how bleak it is right now when you speak of enforcement and corruption? So the Trump family are paid advisors to polymarket and calcium. So those prediction markets and they're obviously the biggest ones are embedded inside the Trump family and the Trumps are planning to open up their own prediction market. So this is I think not hard to understand. The word is just out, we're not enforcing any consumer protection laws against the prediction markets. We want them to be able to get as big as possible. So the only sort of prospect here

12:21is for states to step in and regulate these prediction markets. But the Trump administration is trying to stop states from doing that. That will likely be litigated in the courts or for us ultimately to pass legislation through Congress. But that doesn't seem like a very high likelihood in the near future. So yeah, I think for the foreseeable future it's unfortunately going to be the Wild Wild West. The act that you're proposing, the Betts Off Act and Betts Off happens to be an acronym. You introduced the last Wednesday alongside three fellow Democrats, one in Rhode Island, another in Texas, another in Arizona. What would your bill do? Our bill would say that you can't place bets on government action.

13:21That's kind of the simplest thing that it says. And for two reasons, one, because it's just, you know, rife with opportunity for inside information. But two, you don't want people inside government to be placing their own bets and to be pushing government action so that they make money. I mean, what we know is that right before the United States struck Iran, there were a whole bunch of bets made. So we struck Iran on Saturday and on Friday. A whole bunch of people made bets that the war was going to start the next day. And it was an anomalous series of bets on no other day where there are a bunch of bets made that war will start in 24 hours. So that clearly doesn't smell right. But you also imagine, you know, some young guy in the situation room who has a bet that war is going to start on Saturday pushing the war to start on Saturday, whether that's good for national security or not. So our bill says, first, no bets on government action. Second, it says, in an instance where there's one person that knows the outcome of a bet

14:27and controls the outcome of a bet, that shouldn't be on a market either. So is a particular singer going to appear in a Super Bowl halftime show, right? That shouldn't be a bet because only that singer knows that and the people in their inner circle. Everybody else is, you know, just as unfair odds in making that bet. That would still leave you a whole bunch of stuff to bet on. But our bill basically says, those two kind of bets are fundamentally rigged. And so they shouldn't be allowed on these markets. Yeah, it's worth pointing out that Calci this week seemingly in response to this genre of legislation announced that it was banning. And this is where the sports and the politics of it reconverged. They're banning athletes and politicians from trading on their markets. But based on the scope of your proposed bill, that sounds like what to you? Whitewash, right? I mean, it's an attempt to look like they're doing something but they're not. I mean, let's take the example of a fairly robust betting market, which is, you know,

15:27what words will Donald Trump use in tonight's speech or tonight's press conference? Okay, so their new policy, I guess, says Donald Trump personally can't place that bet. But there's 20 people around Donald Trump who know the answer to that question and who can make bets and can make a bunch of money off of it. That should be prohibited too. I think it's really hard to like chase the inside information. That's why, you know, my legislation is just, let's just not have those markets because I think it's really hard to pick and choose who can and who can't place bets. Yeah, I'm thinking of again, this week, we learned 6.50 AM on the day that, of course, Trump announces formally discussions with Iran are happening apparently and we're going to postpone the strikes and the S&P 500 rose. The price of oil fell about 14 minutes before 7.04 AM when all that stuff happened at 6.50 AM. One and a half billion dollars worth of S&P 500 futures contracts were purchased. $192 million worth of crude oil futures contracts were sold.

16:30And I bring this up to say, I think there's a numbness among lots of people about, yeah, politics, Congress, it's all corrupt, whatever. This though just feels like a cartoon version of it. Yeah, but I think your point is really right. My kids were both born after I was already in Congress and so they've grown up around this stuff. But I had a conversation with my old son a few years back about corruption and he was sort of telling me his assumption that, you know, kind of everybody is on the take. And I was like, but wait a second. Oh, and like you've grown up in this like world, like you know my colleagues, you know that they're not on the take. He's like, yeah, but I think we all just assume that you guys are all bought off. I know you aren't bad, but I just assume everybody else is. And I think that we have just become, you know, really anesthetized to corruption in politics. And we shouldn't because it's actually not true that most people are on the take. In fact, a very small number are and the corruption we've seen in the last year is really anomalous.

17:36And so instead of just accepting it and move on, we should stamp it out. It's a part of a broader problem in society in which we just sort of think that the people that have succeeded in our economy or in our politics, they're just supposed to get whatever spoils come their way. And I just, I just think we should expect more of our economic leaders, right? And of our political leaders. So yeah, worries me. The notion of insider trading, one of the things that any prediction market executive, if you're to ask them about this, at the point out is like, look, Congress people like Chris Murphy, they can trade stocks, right? They're allowed to do that while serving in Congress. So are there spouses? What is your position on the proposed bans on trading individual stocks while serving in Congress for people like you and your family members? I support them. Again, I do think it's important to still recognize that, you know, brazen corruption, you have inside information and you trade a stock. It happens in Congress, but it is really the exception. But we have no reason that we need to trade stocks. We should just

18:40ban that practice. Right now, though, just to sort of compare it to the prediction markets. Now that works. Right now, we can trade stocks, but we have to disclose all of that. So at least you can see, you know, whether there was a dirty deal done, but we don't, nor do our staff have to disclose any bets we've made on prediction markets. And so at the very least, if we're not going to ban these prediction markets, we should do the same thing we do for stocks and make every member of Congress and every high ranking staff person have to disclose if they're making bets on the prediction markets. It does feel like documentation is the minimum that we should be expecting from, frankly, our government, as well as the corporations that get to participate in American capitalism. It's just really hard for me to look at prediction markets and not see it as somehow part of this overlapping then diagram with not only sports betting, but crypto with just the notion of we're going to get off of what has been a traditional pipeline of documentation. But what is

19:48then being sort of welcomed without a full understanding perhaps of the unintended consequences is the fact that we can't even tell anymore who are, who are the people profiting? Who is getting rich become something that is defended by this cloak of invisibility? The reality is these unregulated crypto markets. They are the place where really bad people do their financing. It's where the sex predators and the drug smugglers and the terrorists do their money and they used to have a really hard time moving their money back when everything was, back when money was moved through transparent visible exchanges. The same thing is happening with these prediction markets. Obviously we don't know who's making these trades an hour before the markets open or the day before war starts. The president has his own cryptocurrency and we can't see who's putting money in his pocket. Maybe it's just MAGA fans, but maybe it's foreign governments or oligarchs or CEOs that are

20:54buying Trump's crypto coin, putting money in his pocket and then whispering to him what they want from government. So yeah, at the very least just putting some transparency around all these markets would at least allow journalists and citizens to see whether it's on the level or not. If you think eBay is just a marketplace, you are missing a whole side of it. eBay Live is where real-time excitement meets rare, exclusive, hard-to-find, cards collectible sneakers watches and so much more. You can bid in live auctions, catch exclusive drops and bid directly from trusted sellers while it's all happening live. And it feels like a show, not just shopping, with great hosts, creators, and streamers. Stream shop and score by downloading the eBay app and tapping the eBay Live button right under the search bar. When my daughter was born, my perspective on life changed in an instant. My mind suddenly wasn't just thinking about what was for dinner tomorrow. I was thinking years

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22:58you can get your free quote and up to $3 million in coverage at ethos.com slash PTFO. That's ETHOS.com slash PTFO ethos.com slash PTFO application times and rates may vary. Here is my Discover Card. They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discoverers accept it at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the times. You're playing the loot. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right? Discoverers accept it at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. The notion of cops on the beat when it comes to sports, it's worth pointing out here that, and again, you're obviously a basketball fan. I grew up an enormous fan of the

24:03NBA. I remain so despite many things that worry me one of which is the commissioner of the league Adam Silver saying that on the one hand, we welcome the business of prediction markets. On the other hand, we would like control over how to solve for those consequences, the unintended consequences that we were talking about. He says, quote, this is at the Sloan conference where I also was, I don't think it's one that you can necessarily turn the clock back on. I think how do you assess perspective like that? Oh, I think we absolutely turn back the clock. I mean, the clock hasn't run the dial many times. This is a really recent phenomenon. And the prediction market problem in sports is a specific and acute one. Okay. If the only bet you can place is on the outcome of a game, we still acknowledge that there's a lot of randomness that happens in that game. That is not unless somebody is really on the take a knowable event. But Yannis is a big investor now

25:07in Kalshi. And the bets on Kalshi are not just bets on, you know, who wins the bucks games, but bets on where Yannis is going to play next, right? What the trade structure is going to look like if he ends up getting dealt. And Yannis has tons of control over that. There are bets on who is going to be in the starting lineup. That's not a random question. That's a question that the coach and the coach is kid. And nephew probably knows. So if the NBA and the NFL get in bed with these prediction markets, they are knowingly corrupting the sport. I get it that they're just looking for a quick buck. But this one gets really gnarly pretty quickly. Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball recently disframed his exclusive deal with polymarket as quote imperative steps in proactively managing the new and rapidly growing prediction market space. And quote although, of course, the follow up question is around regulation. Would you like to see the commissioners of these leagues testify before Congress about what feels to many sports fans I've

26:12talked to like double dealing like they're speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They want their cake, but also to eat it too as it concerns how any of this can actually be regulated. Of course, I'd like them to testify because I think it's pretty clear upon questioning you'd learned that they're just in this for the cash grab. And you know, these are very powerful people. And so they probably do have a bit of a god complex. They think that if they can get polymarket or cal sheet in the room, they can convince them to, you know, ban bets on things that might be rigged. I think they're naive. I think these are companies that are more powerful and more capitalized than the leagues themselves. And they're going to offer whatever bets make them money. And it's ultimately just going to lead to more corruption opportunities inside these leagues, not, not less. You know, the question of what has money done to the games that we love, it takes us to youth sports and to private equity. If you were to summarize for people who are not

27:17in the building, rooting at times maniacally for their kids in the American youth sports industrial complex, what has happened? Thanks to the influence of private equity. How would you begin to tell that story? I tell it through, you know, an anecdote. So it's my younger son that plays hockey. I mean, you know, plays in one of these, you know, very competitive and very expensive travel leagues. Part of the reason he plays in that travel league is that the quality of rec level hockey in the East Coast has been gutted. And so if you're a player that has any level of skill, you almost have to play in the travel leagues to be able to play with kids who are at your level. But that's a five to ten thousand dollar investment for many families. And so it ends up excluding a lot of good hockey players from participating at the level that they should be playing at. But it gets even worse in our league, which is owned by private equity. They just find all sorts

28:21of ways to squeeze every dollar out of the product. One of the ways they do that is by creating a closed circuit television system. And that's the only way that you can watch your kids play hockey. I don't, you know, I go to some games, my wife goes to some games, but I can't live stream the game for their mom or their grandparents. That's illegal in our league because they want the parents and the grandparents to buy a subscription to the closed circuit television system. It can be anywhere from 25 to $50 per month to buy Black Bear TV, which is the private equity backed company that owns the league and many of the ranks. So like, again, I get back to this question of like, what is this doing to a spiritually? Like, that's like one of the most important rituals as a parent to be able to share your kids sporting events with their grandparents. And now I can't do that unless my eye or my parents pay hundreds of dollars a year. It's just like robbing us of

29:29the things that make parenting special, that make being a kid special as these youth sports experiences become more and more and more expensive and more monetized. I think a bit of the through line we're discussing here is that the demand for sports in 2026 and beyond. It remains so seemingly inelastic. It is relentless. How much we care about these games to the detriment, perhaps, of every other competing cultural institution that we have left. But the knowledge that you can extract from that, you can frack sports to get more and more money out of it, despite what the consequences again might be to our environment, to our country, to our soul as you put it. It raises just the question of like, how is that what you just described with black bear sports group has been doing with hockey ranks? How is it legal? And is it in fact just the thing that, oh, wow, clever. No one had tried it, but now they did, and it turns out you can totally do that. We used to have an informal understanding in this country that there were

30:33some industries where you didn't want the incentive system to be money. You wanted the incentive system to be just what was right. We have no recollection of this, but the health insurance industry in this country didn't start out as a for-profit business. It was just like the right thing to do, the idea that you would pool risk so that nobody goes bankrupt if they get sick. It started in Texas where a whole bunch of teachers essentially got together and pooled the risk of hospitalization. And you know, until about 20 years ago, health insurance was still not for profit. And then somebody figured out that you could make a whole bunch of money off and it became for profit. That was the same thing with youth sports, right? Like when we grew up, it was inconceivable that a New York investment firm would own the league that my little league baseball team played in. We just had like an understanding that like it was just kind of icky for certain things to be run for profit. So now what do we do? Do we come in as a

31:40Congress or as a state legislature come in and say that youth sports associations can't be owned by for-profit entities? Maybe like maybe that's where it's come to but maybe a lot better off if we could have just kept that old informal understanding. But isn't that the story of our time, Senator? The notion that some people realized shame is a market inefficiency and that if we were to merely decide to not care about what feels like a humiliating concept, if that in fact were to no longer be a pain point for us, then there's yet more money to be won. That just feels like the thing underneath everything we've been talking about. It's a transition that's been in the works for decades, the idea that the only thing that matters in our economy is profit and efficiency and that if a particular industry is generating profit, then it must inherently be working correctly. That's a really new idea in America. It used to be

32:44that we thought an economy should work first and foremost for the common good. We wanted people to make money because that's how you get innovation and ingenuity and hard work is something you want incentivize. But we said first, the economy should work to just make us happy, right, to make us feel fulfilled. And second, it should work to make people rich. So yeah, now I think we've gone to the point where that informal value structure is gone. There is no shame in the private sector. Everything is commoditized. Now we have to look at legislation that's the kind of reinserts these priorities, the common good, worker health, community health, back into the calculus that these companies are making. Yeah, I always think about incentives, right? What are we dangling on the end of the stick? What are the carrots that we are dangling in front of every very clever entrepreneur out in Silicon Valley or every objectively corrupt family member of this

33:48administration? We keep coming back to who's going to save us and our faith collectively as a country in Congress as we wonder who is going to put a stop to any of this is also vanishingly small. But I assume you also wrestle with this, the impotence of the office while knowing better. Yeah, and listen, I'll take responsibility in both my roles, right? I mean, I definitely could, as a parent, have just said, you know what, you're just going to play rec level hockey, right? We're not spending the thousands of dollars. We're not spending our weekends in Philadelphia and Buffalo. So, you know, every parent and every individual can decide to not enter that rat race is willingly, at least when it comes to youth sports. But yes, the ultimate solution here is for Congress to step in and do something about this. And I do think, and I'll just tease this because it's a longer conversation. I do think that there's a real bipartisan consensus out there in America

34:50around how much profit matters in our tire economy. But let's just take youth sports. I don't think people on the right or the left are excited about how professionalized youth sports has become. And I think that there could be an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to work together. Now, Congress is especially impotent right now because of what Trump has done to our entire federal government. And there's not an ability to like take on private equity in sports because private equity right now is so integrated into this administration. But I do think that there's a political realignment there for the taking out in America around people's frustration with the lionization of profit and efficiency and the commoditization of everything not nailed down, including literally baseball. That's there. It's probably not going to be able to be capitalized upon until after Trump has gone.

35:53Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right. And the best part? They accept discover. Accept discover. In a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh. Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby. Get with the times. Right. So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback. I think discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nilson report, the Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Manus is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I could follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

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37:58Yeah, and I think maybe it is true that you're not going to put this journey back in the bottle when it comes to the amount of betting that's happening, and if that's the case, then yes, people are going to feel the impact of government's absence if these prediction markets increasingly become where sports betting happens, and you have no protection on these markets from bets that are inherently rigged. I do think that you're seeing the impact of government inaction. Mainly, we're talking about government not stepping up and acting, but that has an impact on your ability to enjoy the sports that you like. Even as you tell your family to get out of the room, by and large, and watch on tape delay, because you yourself don't trust yourself to regulate your own emotions. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, but I have a stake in it. I guess the reason that I have such strong feelings about why Congress should step up and do something, whether it's college

38:59athletics and compensation or these prediction markets, is because I get such value from being a sports fan. I hate the fact that sports centers now just a betting show. It's like how I would release energy after a hard day in the Senate is that it come home and I just think about sports, and so I get such value from watching my kid play. I got value as a teenage athlete learning how to be a great teammate, learning how to lose, learning how to win. So I know how much value sports can bring to a person's life, and so I don't want to corrupt it by an economy that doesn't care about anything other than money or a government that just sits on the sidelines while these sports markets continue to crumble in atrophy. I'm realizing that things are so dire in our country that I find myself yearning for the motivational pep talk of some coach to come in and remind us. Maybe we just need Jim Calhoun to just yell at us just to rip into just a rip as a new f***ing

39:59ass. Yeah, we are. I mean, listen, we have become a soft culture in a lot of ways and we have moral softness now because like we don't stand for anything as a country morally. We're willing to accept these dizzying levels of corruption, and we I don't know that Hurley's the right guy to give that lecture, but Calhoun, right, as a, as a, as a pretty diehard Irish Catholic. That's probably coming and give a good moral lecture to the country on what we should put up with and what we shouldn't put up with. Right. Shame may be a marketing efficiency, but as a fellow Catholic, I can validate that there is no force quite like guilt. Yeah, there is still a part of our biology that responds to guilt, whether our economy responds to it or not, our DNA responds to it. Yeah, my mom is living proof of that as well. Senator, a really good conversation. Thank you so much for joining us and hopefully we'll talk on the other side of what feels like, I don't know, at times

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